Implants such as stents and occlusive coils have been used in patients for a wide variety of reasons. For instance, stents are often used to treat arterial stenosis secondary to atherosclerosis. Various stent designs have been developed and used clinically, but self-expandable and balloon-expandable stent systems and their related deployment techniques are now predominant. Examples of self-expandable stents currently in use are WALLSTENT® stents (Schneider Peripheral Division, Minneapolis, Minn.) and Gianturco stents (Cook, Inc., Bloomington, Ind.). The most commonly used balloon-expandable stent is the PALMAZ® stent (Cordis Corporation, Warren, N.J.).
Typically, after balloon angioplasty has been performed, either a self-expandable or balloon-expandable stent is advanced over a guidewire and positioned at the target site. A protective sheath or membrane is then retracted proximally to allow expansion of a self-expanding stent. Alternatively, a delivery balloon may be inflated, thereby expanding the stent.
Despite improvements in delivery systems, balloon design, and stent design, these over-the-guidewire and/or sheathed self-expanding stent deployment systems still have their limitations. For instance, sheathed stents tend to move forward when the sheath is pulled back, deploying them imprecisely. The sheathed design also requires that the stent delivery system be larger in diameter and less flexible. Furthermore, for sheathed systems, the interventional procedure may only proceed if the vessel of interest is of sufficiently large diameter to allow sheath placement to avoid significant damage to the luminal surface of the vessel. Moreover, balloon-expandable stents, by virtue of a large diameter and relative inflexibility, are often unable to reach distal vasculature. For both self-expandable and balloon-expandable stent deployment systems, repositioning or step-wise release of the stent are usually not available features. Similarly, occlusive coil placement systems such as systems that deliver detachable platinum coils and GDC® coils also generally do not contain repositionable or step-wise release features.
Consequently, a smaller diameter (lower profile), repositionable implant deployment device that releases an implant into, or upon, a body region in a more precise, continuous or step-wise fashion, without the use of a sheath or balloon would provide significant benefit to patients with various medical conditions.